Once Upon Stilettos (Enchanted Inc #2) (2 page)

“Come on, Katie,” Ari urged. I felt like I was being recruited by the Cult of the Red Shoes.

“No, not this time,” I insisted. “I need clothing, and I need to buy it soon so I’ll have time to get ready. Gemma, we’d better get down to moderate dresses.” She sighed and put the sample shoe down. “I’ll see you two on Monday,” I added very pointedly to Trix and Ari as I began walking toward the escalators, with or without my roommate.

“They seemed like fun,” Gemma said when she caught up with me. “I can’t believe you haven’t talked more about your co-workers. You only talk about that one cute guy. Whatever happened with him, anyway?”

“Nothing. He’s just a friend. Besides, with the gossip mill in that place, dating a co-worker would be suicide.” Ethan fell in the gray area between co-worker and non-co-worker, since he was contracting his services to MSI and didn’t have an office in the building. Also, I hadn’t yet told my roommates that he was working for the same company, since I’d met him through them and explaining why he’d ended up working with me would have been more than complicated. To change the subject, I said, “So, what look should I go for—casual, sexy, trendy, sophisticated?”

With the opportunity to dress me, Gemma quickly forgot about discussing my co-workers. She picked out a simple black dress with an embroidered cardigan that fell within my budget. But she hadn’t had the last word. “Those red shoes would go with this outfit,” she said as we left the cash register.

“I swear, what is it with you and those shoes? You’d think they had you mesmerized. I’ve spent enough on this outfit as it is, and the black shoes I already own will do fine. Now home!”

Several hours later, I was dressed in my new outfit, my hair and makeup were done, and my roommates were getting on my nerves. “You don’t have to wait around, you know,” I told them. “You’ve already met Ethan, and I don’t need anyone to help pin on my corsage and take our picture together.”

“I wonder if there’s any film in my camera,” Gemma mused.

“No! Geeze, you act like me going on a date is a once-in-a-lifetime event.”

“With you, it almost is,” Marcia, my other roommate, said from her position on the couch.

“I’ve been on dates recently,” I protested.

“Yeah, but this is the first time I can remember in a very long time that you’ve been on a second date with the same guy,” Marcia replied.

She was right. After I went out with a guy once, he seldom wanted to see me again. Most of the time, it was because I was too normal, too boring, too girl-next-door, too much like a sister. That had changed lately, though. Now they were more likely to think I was too weird, and they’d be right. Take my last blind date, where a strange man appeared in the restaurant and serenaded me during dinner while claiming that I’d saved him from a lifetime as a frog. Really, all I’d done was rescue him from an illusion that made him think he was a frog. When he wasn’t stalking me, he was an okay guy, and now he was dating Marcia. Gemma’s boyfriend, Philip, was the one who really used to be a frog, but I had nothing to do with disenchanting him. I was only there when it happened.

Most of that crazy stuff wasn’t my fault at all, since I can’t actually do magic, but my job means I’m around a lot of weird things that I can’t explain to normal people without them thinking I need to be medicated. It was tough living a double life where I couldn’t talk to my closest friends about the things I saw or what happened at the office. It was kind of like being a spy, I guess, only a lot less glamorous.

Then there was Ethan. On our last date I’d discovered his magical immunity, then a couple of guys from work had shown up to test him by making increasingly outlandish stuff happen in the middle of the restaurant until he was forced to admit that he was seeing things, and that had dragged him into my crazy world when MSI recruited him. He’d asked me out again, anyway, even after he’d been involved in an all-out magical battle. It was the first step toward having a real boyfriend. But that would be more likely if he didn’t have to run the roommate gauntlet when he came to pick me up.

“I don’t suppose you two could find somewhere you have to be, oh, right about now,” I said.

“You’re trying to get rid of us?” Gemma asked.

“That, or you hide in the bedroom when he gets here.”

“You’re no fun.”

“I don’t want to make him feel awkward, and since he and Marcia were set up that time and didn’t hit it off…” I let my voice trail off with the hint.

Marcia slammed her book shut. “Let’s go get some coffee,” she said. Gemma was still protesting as Marcia dragged her out the door.

That left me alone to wait nervously. I paced our tiny living room as I counted down the minutes until Ethan was due. All I wanted was a relatively normal date. Boring would be perfectly fine with me. Was that too much to ask? In my life, it usually was.

A knock on my front door startled me. I’d been expecting to hear the buzzer from the front door downstairs. I opened the door to see Ethan standing there, looking very
GQ
in a sweater, jacket, and slacks. “Hi, how did you get in?” I asked.

“I hit the wrong button by mistake, and your neighbor buzzed me in. You look great, by the way.”

“Thanks.” I felt oddly flustered, more nervous than I had been before my very first date back in high school when my entire family hid in the kitchen while I greeted the guy. “Let me get my purse.”

I locked my apartment, then we went down the stairs. I had to hang onto the railing, my legs felt so watery with pre-date jitters. On the landing below my floor, a door opened and a grizzled head stuck out. “You could be more courteous to your neighbors, you know,” the person said. “All that pacing in those heels—
click, click, click
. And then he has to go and push the wrong button.”

“Sorry about that, Mrs. Jacobs,” I said, feeling my face turn beet red. Great, now I sounded like a lousy neighbor, and Ethan knew I was nervous about the date.

When we made it outside, he said with a grin, “She seems charming.”

“I think she’s the designated building curmudgeon.”

“Every building has to have one.” He opened the back door of a cab waiting in front of my building. “Your chariot, milady.”

I got in and slid across the seat to make room for him. He gave the cabdriver a nod, and the cab took off. “I planned something a little different. I hope you don’t mind,” he said as he settled back into the seat next to me.

“I’m sure it’ll be great,” I said, fingering the strap of my purse. This was why I wanted a boyfriend—to reach a comfort zone with a person so I didn’t have to go through this kind of stress every weekend. But as my roommates never ceased to remind me, you had to date to get a boyfriend.

“And let’s hope it doesn’t go like last time,” he said with a laugh. “I like Rod and Owen, but I don’t want them showing up on all our dates.”

I’d been so good about not thinking about a certain other person, and there my date had to go and mention him. I distracted myself by focusing on his casual mention of “all our dates.” That was the kind of detail Marcia and Gemma would want to hear later when we analyzed every second of this date. There was a strong implication that he wanted to make this a steady thing. Then again, would he have asked me out at all if he already knew he didn’t want to see me again after this date?

This dating stuff was way too complicated, and I was too old to be such a novice at it.

The cab pulled up in front of a Midtown restaurant. Ethan paid the driver, then got out and helped me out of the cab. He held his arm out for me to take—my mom would have been so impressed with such a gentlemanly show of manners—and escorted me inside. I was surprised to see one long table rather than the usual restaurant arrangement of scattered individual tables.

“It’s a wine dinner,” Ethan explained. “There’s a wine selected to go with each course, all from the same winery. I thought it would be fun. We’ll have other people to chat with and an automatic topic of conversation.”

I was all in favor of having a topic of conversation that didn’t involve magical intellectual property, which was what we’d talked about on our last date. I was nervous about the wine, though. In addition to being a total lightweight who’s under the table asleep after a couple of glasses, I had the world’s least sophisticated palate. I couldn’t find anything wrong with white zinfandel, something that drove my roommates crazy. They said no real wine drinker would go near that pink stuff. I’d look like a total hick among people who could discern a hint of oak in a full-bodied red, or whatever it was people said when they were analyzing wines.

We had to mingle with the other diners while eating appetizers brought around by waiters. I wasn’t exactly sure what was in each bite, but the wine they gave us with that course was pretty good. I sipped at it, knowing I needed to pace myself.

The crowd, however, was enough to drive me to drink. These people reminded me of my old job, the one I left when I joined MSI. They’d all probably be shocked and horrified that a small-town Texas girl was in their midst. I was careful to suppress my accent while making small talk. These were the kind of people who’d automatically look down on me for not being a born-and-bred city slicker. I felt a bit better when I saw that Ethan looked stiff and uncomfortable, too. He didn’t know anyone there, either.

He edged closer to me after one waiter passed by with a tray of what looked like liverwurst on toast. “Sorry about this,” he said in a low voice. “I didn’t realize we’d be dealing with the yuppies from hell.”

“Just as long as you promise to defend me,” I whispered back.

The host urged everyone to take their seats. Fortunately, Ethan and I were seated next to each other so we had a chance at private conversation. The array of silverware on the table was intimidating, not because I didn’t know how to use it (my mother is a good Southern woman who taught us proper table manners, so I knew to work from the outside in), but because of the number of courses it implied. A glass of wine with each course would mean I’d be horizontal before we got to dessert. My bigger worry was that alcohol might lower my inhibitions enough for me to talk about work, which was not a good idea with a job like mine. Then again, everyone would probably write off any weirdness to the drunkenness. I vowed to myself that I wouldn’t finish each glass of wine.

At the head of the table, a well-dressed man stood up and tapped his water glass with his knife. He reminded me of the man who’d tried to start a community theater group in my hometown. Even though he was in a tiny Texas farming community, he’d acted like a theater impresario. It took him a while to figure out that avant-garde surrealist drama didn’t go over well in that setting.

This guy wouldn’t have looked out of place wearing a sweeping cloak and a monocle. He was introduced as Henri, a representative of the winery providing the evening’s selections. “Good evening, everyone,” he said. In spite of his French name, his accent was pure American. “Welcome to tonight’s dinner. You’ve already been enjoying our Estate Sauvignon Blanc with the canapés. I’m sure you noticed the lush texture and hints of passion fruit and pear.”

Frankly, I hadn’t noticed any of that. I pretty much just tasted wine. If it was all made out of grapes, how was it supposed to taste like passion fruit?

“With our first course,” Henri continued, “we’ll be serving our famous Pinot Gris. You may detect flavors of apple and lemon, with a midpalate burst of ginger. It complements the salmon with mango salsa we’ll be serving.”

Waiters brought out fresh wineglasses, then filled them with a wine that looked to me a lot like the one we’d just been drinking. I followed everyone’s lead in swirling the wine—only sloshing a little over the edge—and sniffing it. Yep, smelled like wine. Everyone then took a sip and seemed to ponder the flavors. I couldn’t taste anything but wine. No apple, lemon, or ginger. I was horrified when I noticed Ethan nodding sagely. Was he really into this stuff? On our first date, he took me out for hamburgers. This was a real switch.

Then again, was it so bad if he was a wine fanatic? Learning something new would be good for me. I complained all the time about feeling like a hick in New York, and here was my chance to do something to change that. I took another sip of wine and tried desperately to taste all those delicate flavors that were supposed to be there.

We went through another course that came with a wine Henri described as “creamy with citrus undertones.” I had a hard time thinking of wine as creamy. Ethan leaned toward me and asked, “Are you enjoying yourself?”

After three glasses of wine—even if I didn’t drink the whole glass—I was feeling pretty good, regardless of whether this event was my cup of tea—make that glass of wine. “Sure!” I said cheerfully, raising my glass to him.

If I was feeling good, that was nothing compared with the rest of the guests. They were practically swooning in rapture with each sip. I’d thought I’d be a lightweight in a group of real wine aficionados, but they were acting drunker than I was—a lot drunker. The woman seated next to me was nibbling on her husband’s ear and halfway crawling into his lap, while he had a hand up her sweater. I fought back the impulse to tell them to get a room and turned to the other side of the table, where a man who’d introduced himself as a cardiologist was wearing his necktie around his head like a bandanna. This felt more like a frat party than a wine dinner. I appeared to be the most sober one there, except for Ethan.

I leaned over to him. “Do these things usually get like this?”

“I’ve only been to one other, and behavior there was a little more restrained. Frankly, this is a lot more fun.”

They switched to a red wine with the main course, which meant I could finally tell the difference from the last few wines. I still didn’t taste the clove, coffee, or wood flavors Henri promised, for which I was somewhat grateful. It seemed to me that if your wine tasted like wood or coffee, you’d throw it out. The other guests knocked back the wine like they were doing tequila shots, so I doubted they were noticing the flavor nuances, either.